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Friday, August 31, 2012

A battle that the BJP cannot win

Attack the government, if you will
for not taking decisions, but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is
responsible for the paralysis of parliament. The party says that the
Prime Minister is responsible for allotting coal blocks to private
parties when they should have been disposed through an auction. Basing
themselves on the Comptroller & Auditor General's report, they say
that the PM must go, otherwise they will not let Parliament function. Its
leaders are quite unapologetic about their stand, with Arun Jaitley
declaring that the party was willing to stand in 'majestic isolation',
if required.

Remarkably, even as the Delhi trio of
Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and L.K. Advani have brought on an unprecedented
political crisis in the country, party president Nitin Gadkari has gone
with his family on a 22- day vacation to Canada. Strategy
It is not very clear as to what is motivating the BJP to take what is
clearly an over the top stand. Simply put, the BJP-led National
Democratic Alliance has some 155 seats in Parliament and the Congress
led United Progressive Alliance has over 267.
Since the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party largely support
the UPA, the ruling alliance has an unassailable numerical majority. That
is why, instead of moving a no-confidence motion and seeking the
removal of the government, as parliamentary procedure would dictate, the
BJP wants the Congress to commit hara-kiri. Now,
just why it thinks the Congress should oblige is not entirely clear
since shame and self esteem are hardly qualities that you factor into
equations defining the political balance of power.
The BJP cannot demand that its numerical weakness, a consequence of its
poor performance in the 2009 general elections, be ignored. At the end of the day, the Congress is the ruling dispensation and the BJP the Opposition. This
balance is reflected not only in the way the chips would fall if a no
confidence motion were moved, but also in how the Public Accounts
Committee which, as per convention, examines the Comptroller &
Auditor General's reports in greater detail would deal with the issue.
Perhaps there is a simpler answer to this seemingly unreasonable course
adopted by the party. The
two leaders who are the most vociferous in the debate- Jaitley and
Swaraj are known to be acolytes of Advani. A seppuku by the Congress
would give Mr Advani, who has insistently refused to announce his
retirement, a shot at becoming the prime minister. Lalji is a sprightly
85 now, so in 2014 he will be approaching 87. At
the same time, it would neutralise the threat that is being posed to
Jaitley and Swaraj's ambitions by Narendra Modi, who will not become the
definitive prime ministerial candidate of the BJP till the Gujarat
State Assembly elections are over, six months from now. The
BJP's dysfunctional behaviour has been visible for some time now. And
most recently it was manifest in its conduct during the presidential
elections. Instead of
coming out with a credible candidate who would have represented the
party's ideological and philosophical position clearly, they sought to
encourage a UPA renegade- Mamata Banerjee-to stick the knife in the
Congress party's back. The
result was not surprising-the BJP ended up with no candidate of its own
and had to piggy-back on P A Sangma's candidacy- another UPA renegade,
backed by two NDA outliers, Jayalalitha and the AIADMK and Navin Patnaik
and the BJD. Pushed by Jaitley and Swaraj and backed by Advani, the BJP
appears to have staked all in a battle it cannot win. Yes,
it can draw out the Coalgate affair. Its dirty tricks department can
slyly suggest that this or that allottee was related to this or that
Congress leader or minister. Govt But on the larger issue, they have not
managed to shake the Congress from its position that the allotments
were made in a transparent manner and that if there was wrongdoing in
terms of misrepresentations and forgeries by the companies in question,
well they have the CBI looking into it. The
government's view that the presumptive losses have been wrongly
calculated is not that outlandish. And, to top it all, there is clear
evidence that among those who opposed the auction route were chief
ministers of the BJPruled states.
When it comes to mining, no ruling party in the country has a clean
record. The BJP's Karnataka copy book has been thoroughly blotted by the
Reddy brothers of Bellary, 'god sons' of Sushma Swaraj, who
coincidentally blamed Jaitley for their appointment as ministers in the
Karnataka cabinet.
Consequences As it is, the Delhi trio-Advani, Swaraj and Jaitley- may
have taken on more than they can chew in targeting Prime Minister Singh.
Mr Advani should not
have forgotten the consequences his party faced after he decided to
target Singh during the 2009 elections. This time, the BJP believes that
the PM cannot escape blame since he was the Coal Minister. This could
however, be misleading. The Prime Minister is often nominally the incharge of several ministries. He
certainly does have, as Jaitley pointed out, the 'vicarious'
responsibility for the allocations- which the PM has acknowledged in his
Monday statement in Parliament- though few would agree that he was
'directly' liable as well, which would mean he was taking day-to-day
interest in the Coal ministry's activities. The Coalgate affair will have lasting consequences in India's political history. At one level, it has brought the already crisis-ridden system one step closer to a breakdown. If
the principal Opposition of the day refuses to acknowledge the majority
of an incumbent government and is hell-bent on pushing the situation
over the brink, there is little that the government of the day can do,
except to take undemocratic steps like seeking the expulsion and
eviction of the entire NDA from Parliament.
We may therefore have the paradox of the system being cleansed per
force by the actions of the civil society and the Opposition and the
reaction of the government. But the government system itself seems to be
tottering towards a collapse. Mail Today August 28, 2012